Launch: Airspan WiMAX Product Suite

The nationwide adoption of WiMAX technology-based products is expanding at a speedy pace. Today comes broadband wireless solutions provider Airspan Networks, Inc. and makes an official announcement about the availability of its new self-installable indoor WiMAX products suite that link Desktop PCs, Laptops, Internet-ready telephone sets and other broadband devices directly to operator networks.

The new AS.MAX family of WiMAX-based stations and end-user devices includes support for residential and nomadic internet access, corporate data networks, and VoIP. The AS.MAX portfolio announced today will be commercially available in the third quarter of 2005.

The AS.MAX product suite is comprised of two customer premises equipment (CPE) devices, the EasyST and ProST. The EasyST, which uses Intel’s Rosedale wireless broadband system-on-chip, connects IP-enabled devices directly to WiMAX networks and can be installed indoors by end-users fast without needing costly truck-roll deployments by the operators. Designed for the residential and small enterprise markets, the device is also an integrated voice and data WiMAX product, supporting two voice lines and an Ethernet connection. It can also act as an 802.11 WiFi Access Point. According to the company, the ProST CPE will serve larger enterprises and is designed for outdoor professional deployment. Both CPEs are designed to work on any WiMAX-Certified base station.

“Airspan’s Easy ST is on track to begin to deliver the promise of WiMAX this year for residential and small business customers,” said Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel’s Broadband Wireless Division. “Broadband access is currently only available to a fraction of computer users, but WiMAX solutions will help bring high-speed wireless to the next generation of computer users.”

The new product suite also includes point-to-multipoint base stations called HiperMAX, MacroMAX and MicroMAX, as well as an integrated point-to-point backhaul solution, PrimeMAX. The Software Defined Radio (SDR) in the base stations allows high-capacity AS.MAX base stations to be upgraded from the fixed to the mobile WiMAX standard, thereby enabling connections to laptops, PDAs and other portable devices supported by the emerging IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard.

“Broadband Wireless needs to be simple and affordable for operators and end users. With this in mind, we have designed AS.MAX as the most robust product family on the market. AS.MAX supports converged video, voice and data services on a single platform, which will make it very attractive AS.MAX Introduction, to operators wishing to bundle multi-media service offerings to their end-customers. We have also introduced a broad range of products and devices to fit different network price points and densities, permitting low start-up capital expenditures for our customers, which is an essential part of the offering. In addition, we will address the cellular backhaul market for the first time,” explained Eric Stonestrom, president and CEO of Boca Raton, Florida-based Airspan Networks.

The company announced that it will commence trials of AS.MAX products with service providers in the second quarter of this year, and expects commercial WiMAX network rollouts to begin in the third quarter of the year.

Airspan Networks Inc.

www.airspan.com

Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet.com and Internet Telephony magazine. Previously, she was assistant editor for EContent magazine in Connecticut. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

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